A warm welcome in Northern Finland!

Well where do I start? Mike met sammi from finland last night, a top guy who advised on the best routes to take through finland and also gave contact details if we got into trouble! Thanks sammi!

Today has been an experience, we ploughed on through sweden this morning which was like a compendium on adventure motorcycling. First the road ran out and turned to rubble - scary! None of us crashed though. A very friendly swedish woman made us cheese and ham sandwiches and coffee in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere which calmed our nerves a little. Then it was elk on the road, then reindeer dodging, which at 80mph is a little nerve racking. Then it was all three together.

We had lunch on the pavement the town in Sweden where they send all the ugly people. The only shining light was anna the strawberry seller who is paid 20 dollars an hours to stand at a stall. We think she has a sideline selling drugs though.

We made it to the arctic circle but after nearly 2000 miles of successful rendez vous, mike ended up at a different arctic circle to will and myself - with us in sweden and him in finland.

We stumbled upon what appeared to be a fabulous campsite in northern finland but after an hour it became apparent that all was not well! Full of locals that are gathered to race their snow mobiles over the river(!) tomorrow (we should point out at this juncture that the river is NOT frozen which makes things even more interested).. A very drunk fin with a kyrgistany drunken wife told us that we weren't welcome and gesticulated with his middle finger us and told us in his best english to 'F*ck off' one by one. He also accused mike of stealing a boat and questioned whether his heritage was wholly caucasion.

Needless to say we didn't. 1 because we drank too many beers to ride our bikes and 2 because I want to see them sink their snowmobiles in the morning. We are sleeping with one eye open tonight with the bikes right outside the door. Welcome to the east boys!!!

We hope to meet more fins like sammi and less of the axe weilding homicidal maniacs we got tangled up with tonight!

Cheers

Simon

Ps. We have all gone to bed with the opening bars Duelling Banjo's going through our minds.

Pps. Mozzies the size of small children.

Ppps. We are all going a little nuts because its been broad daylight for the last six days, can make you a little crazy!
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